Slovenia will put up several kilometres of barbed wire on critical parts of the border with Croatia, where illegal migrants were increasingly observed attempting to cross into the country in the last months, Slovenian broadcaster POP-TV reported on Tuesday.

Slovenia had already put up 176 kilometres of barbed wire and barriers along its border with Croatia during the migration crisis in 2015.

Slovenia’s Interior Ministry has recently announced stricter measures for this autumn, because the number of illegal migrants has increased significantly compared to 2017, to about a thousand a month.

The country’s government confirmed that new barbed wire would be put up in the coming weeks, as well as that the old barriers would be renewed, but the Interior Ministry declined to specify where and when that would happen, the broadcaster reported.

According to POP-TV, the wire will be put up along the river Kupa in the region of Bela Krajina on the far south-east of the country.

The unprecedented influx of migrants from the Middle East travelling the so-called Balkan route towards western European countries in 2015 stopped after the EU had signed an agreement with Turkey. But an alternative route was recently established with increasing numbers of migrants travelling through Bosnia, trying to pass through Croatia and into Slovenia to reach the Schengen area.

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